NEW YORK — The first episode of the second season of “House of Cards” ends by cursing out its audience. Not metaphorically. Just before the credits begin to roll, the camera closes in on the brand-new pair of spiffy, initialed cuff links owned by Machiavellian politician Frank Underwood (Kevin Spacey) that are neatly propped up in a jewelry box. They read: “F. U.” The initials stay on screen for the entire closing credit sequence. Finally, “House of Cards” is no longer playing the part of serious-minded, quality TV program and wants to just get naughty.

“House of Cards” premiered nearly a year ago, a flagship series announcing Netflix's grand ambitions. Directed by David Fincher, starring Kevin Spacey and Robin Wright, and set in an extremely venal version of Washington, the series had its bona fides in order. It was widely binged, became the talk of Washington, and was nominated for just about all the major awards, doing all the credibility establishing Netflix could have hoped. But there was always a bit of a disconnect between the show “House of Cards” purported to be_ Netflix's “Sopranos,” its “Mad Men,” its gorgeous, morally complex, masterful drama series — and what was actually on screen, something much more melodramatic and ridiculous, a show with a tendentious relationship to reality featuring a leading man who spoke to the camera like “Saved by the Bell's” Zack Morris doing an impersonation of one of the Blanches (either Dubois or Devereaux, take your pick).

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Upon its return, “House of Cards” feels like it has embraced its crazy, tilting toward “Scandal” instead of premium cable. In last season's finale, Frank Underwood was about to be named vice president, and the series picks up exactly where it left off, tying up some loose ends and hurling other plots into motion, laying it all on thick and dripping. Frank remains a man of unquenchable ambition, and he doesn't have to state his intentions for us to understand where he wants to go: the presidency. “Democracy is so overrated,” Frank says, and proves it again and again, another of TV's charismatic, evil masterminds who finds manipulating the people around him as easy as cocking an eyebrow.

Spacey's performance feels campier and funnier this time around, and purposefully so, like he's playing to the balcony at a “Steel Magnolias” revival. For much of the first episode, he avoids speaking directly to the camera, but when he does, he snaps, “Did you think I'd forgotten you?” his Southern accent large as an antebellum porch and nearly as breezy. Robin Wright, playing Frank's wife, Claire, is the ice to his fire, but even she gets some humdingers: “I am willing to let your child wither and die inside you if that's what's required,” she tells a former colleague, her face placid as ever.

The first four episodes fly by in a blur of cheeky maxims, convoluted plot twists, and storylines about the deep Web. Frank has a new political protégé, Jacqueline Sharp (“Deadwood's” Molly Parker), a woman Frank recognizes as spiritual kin. When he calls her a “ruthless pragmatist,” she looks turned on. She's the sort of woman who can say, “I hate myself for [doing this horrible thing], but I'll get over it,” with so little emotion, she was clearly never under it. On “House of Cards,” the world is still inhabited by two types: chumps and double-dealing, amoral strivers, the only people who ever get anything worth having.

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Paskin, Slate's TV critic, has written for New York Magazine, The New York Times Magazine andSalon.com.